Cats and memory

Memory website Memrise suggests that pictures of cats can help people who a learning a foreign language to remember new vocabulary. If you are familiar with Memrise, you’ll know that it asks users to provide images to help encode new memories. Memrise’s research into what images were most effective in helping people remember (visual mnemonics) showed that cats featured disproportionately amongst the highest rated mnemonics. This has led Memrise to develop Cat Academy, which uses images of cute cats to build memories of Spanish words and phrases.

The Complete Companions series has, of course, long been associated with cute cats at AS (and noble hounds at A2), and we’ve continued this trend with our latest recruit, Maisie: the cover cat for our forthcoming AS Psychology The Revision Companion title. So what is it that makes cats so effective as visual memory-boosters? While some experts talk of cuteness, the Psychology Blog would suggest that the inscrutable wisdom of our feline friends carries with it the opportunity for catastrophic loss of dignity – a terrific combination, and very memorable.